Bingo One-shots
by Phantomhill
Summary: Unrelated one-shots for December's bingo! Victorian (not quite) AU; Bedtime Story; Holiday; Missing Person (Chloe time-travels; maybe listens to a story through a door; persuades Lucifer an old-fashioned way; and really needs a vacation)
1. Victorian

Prompt: Victorian

* * *

Lucifer was content to mind his own business as he leisurely strolled down the hill to his stagecoach. It wasn't a mood that hit him terribly often, and only ever on his visits up from Hell, but this was a particularly exceptional instance—it was difficult to be nosy when there was no one to be nosy about save his driver, and he already knew the darkest desires of that man, so why bother further?

Lucifer was content to mind his own business until time ripped open to spit out a human woman at his feet. The portal closed with a transtemporal snap as the woman pushed herself upright.

"Well, you're positively _scandalous_ , darling." Form fitting trousers (trousers!), flowy but leave-little-to-the-imagination blouse in a fantastic shade of blue, and, overtop her chest, a heavy vest inscribed with the letters LAPD. No sense of fashion about her what with that particular garment, nor any sense whatsoever of modern decency, but her ankles unabashedly made up for it. "I must approve."

The woman frowned, dusting dirt from her trousers (again, trousers!). "L… Lucifer?" Ah, interesting. She blinked. The blouse drew out her eyes impressively. Around her neck hung some kind of necklace with a pendant of misshapen metal.

"The one and only, darling."

"When did you get a top hat?" She frowned in his general direction before ignoring the answer coming to his lips in favor of the scenery. "Actually, I'm really not surprised. Where are we?" Each divot and detail of the hillside drew her undivided attention, and Lucifer realized that he felt vaguely like a broken lamp for all the care she was giving him. She was at least relatively immune to his charms—another point of interest.

"Not the question of the hour, darling." She didn't bother turning back to him, taking in the beaten dirt path to the bottom of the hill. Lucifer tried to gather her attention again. "Come from your chambers, did you, or something more exciting, hmm? You're practically naked."

"What do you mean?" She adjusted something at her waistband, some type of firearm, Lucifer supposed, and continued, "I was at Henrick's, where you were supposed to be ten minutes ago, for the raid. And I dress like this every day." A raid? Lucifer could, in fact, imagine seeing this woman leading a boat of Vikings against some hapless coastal town. "This doesn't look like L.A." L.A.? The tear in time was perhaps closer to a tear in space-time. Lucifer frowned; time displacement was easy enough, but in conjecture with spatial? Shoving her back through time was one thing, but flying her home was another entirely—the universe hardly like one of him at a time, he daren't think of the consequences of two.

"We're just north of London," Lucifer said. She shook her head, ponytail bobbing along behind her. "While I'm normally most content for people to know me and not run away without their wits, but I must know: how do you know me?"

The woman's head shake of denial halted into a frown. "What are you talking about?" She stepped into his personal space, concern (concern?) in her eyes. "Lucifer, are you okay?"

"Am I… 'okay?'" he repeated. The woman kept staring at him. "Darling, you fell face first through a spatial-temporal rift, and you're asking _me_ if I am 'okay'?" A bee lazily hummed by them. "Bloody hell, woman, get some perspective."

The woman's brow furrowed. "Spatial-temp… is this more of your devil thing?"

"My—" devil thing? "No. For once, this has no relation to me whatsoever." He could figure out what his 'devil thing' referred to easily enough, but why did she say it like she didn't believe it?

" _Right_." There it was again, that disbelief. But she knew his name, and she knew some version of him reasonably well.

"I assure you, spatial-temporal rifts are not my realm."

"Mhm." What the hell?

"Contrary to popular belief, I don't lie."

"I know, Lucifer." She sighed and crossed her arms. Immune to his charms, at least acquaintances with him, and entirely unbelieving of him. "I'm having a hard time translating from your metaphor right now, so really, where are we?" His metaphor? She believed that he was talking in metaphor? "Are we—are we in a new park I don't know? Maybe a golf course? A Ren-fair somehow?" What had other him gotten himself into?

"London, north of. The year is 1850, and the date is July 27th, and why will you not listen to me?" She was busy looking around at the scenery again, as if the blades of grass or his waiting coach and buggy would tell her where she was. "Darling. Er—" her name. What was her name? Jane, Carmen, Carly… something short, he bet.

"Chloe," she said. Her attention returned to him with equal measures of concern. "Are you sick?"

"Chloe." He ignored her last comment. "It seems you know me in the future somewhere far from here, and it sounds as if you and I will become more than friendly," he leered at her, and she obligingly rolled her eyes, "but I haven't met you yet, understand? I don't know you, and I suspect I won't for at least a few decades, judging by your appalling lack of fashion."

Chloe opened her mouth to respond, and she was almost halfway through her first syllable, when the same transtemporal-transpatial portal opened up and a pair of black-clad arms pulled her back through. Lucifer peered in, just as it was closing, and managed to wave at himself on the other side. His future self smirked in return. That same snap, and the portal was gone, leaving Lucifer alone save for the verdant hillside and chirping birds, and he allowed himself a moment to appreciate how fun Chloe was going to be in a few decades before returning to his stroll.


	2. Bedtime Story

Bedtime Story

* * *

"Before there was—"

"You have to start with 'once upon a time,' Lucifer."

"Once upon a time? Why? Not only is that unwieldy, spawn, especially given 'olim' is much shorter even though that word came about more than two millennia earlier, but this story doesn't—"

"You have to say it."

"… Very well.

"Once upon a time, before there was thought and imagination, there was Nothing. The Nothing was so deep that it seemed impenetrable, that the flitting bits of something were meaningless, that the pinpricks of hope-without-thought were devoid of life. In this nothingness, there existed the Winds and the Waters. The Winds blew through the Nothing such that the Nothing moved, and the Waters were so ferocious that the Nothing daren't approach. The great storm of Winds and Water and Nothing raged for eon upon eon, until one day, a little pinprick of hope-without-thought was told to weaken the dark. This little thing of hope-without-thought was called an angel, and he, like all his brothers and sisters, was too young to think of disobeying his Father, and so he went away to fight the Nothing. But don't allow any other retelling to fool you: the lonely angel wasn't happy to do this. No. He was scared."

"What was he scared of?"

"You're supposed to be sleeping."

"Sorry."

"The lonely angel was scared of leaving his family. He didn't want to go face the Nothing and the Winds and the Water; all of those had hurt him before, and he hadn't been able to do anything. He didn't want to go alone lest he never be able to return home. But, you see, he had to go because he didn't yet have his own thoughts, and so he went. The lonely angel flew away from all of his siblings, and all of his family, and all of the somethingness that was the shallow shining of the Silver City, and he flew out into the dark of Nothing.

"The angel was alone, and the Winds saw this, and so they batted at him and battered him and threw him across the cosmos so violently that the Darkness tore holes into itself. These holes became what you call singularities, and the angel became ensnared in one, and the angel was afraid. He was cold, he was lost, and he was so, so afraid. And for the first time in creation, as the lonely angel was struggling his way through the singularity, he dared pose a question. It was the first question; the first sign of thought and will; and with this question he transformed from a hope-without-thought to a hope-with-thought, and so he became truly sentient."

"What was the question?.. oh, right. I'm asleep, see?"

"The question, spawn, was 'why.'"

"That's a stupid question."

"Yes, well, it was the first question in the universe, so cut me some bloody slack, hmm? I had to invent a new word just to think it."

"You did?"

"It's a perfectly reasonable question, especially if all your existence you are raised not to think. Now, may I continue..? Right.

"After time and time again of struggling and failing, the lonely angel eventually clawed himself free of the Winds' and Darkness' trap. The spark of thought called to him and pushed him forwards, out, to freedom, but it died when once more he faced the wrath of the Winds. Again, he was a hope-without-thought, his question left in the infinite depths of the singularity. So the Winds attacked him, mindless, and he of like mind began to fall. He fell and he fell, tumbling farther and farther from his home and his siblings, until he passed through the void between the Darkness and the Water and plunged into the tremulous murk of waves.

"The waves tossed and they turned, they growled and they roared, and the angel could not keep afloat. His limbs were fatigued from the singularity, his eyes were heavy with sleep and acceptance, and the Water was relentless. The lonely angel began to sink, and his wings, once beacons of the Silver City's somethingness, dulled in the impenetrable abyss.

"The lonely angel could not die, however, as he didn't know life, and so he sank. He sank deeper and deeper, and ever deeper more, until he dared think again. A niggling thought—the first of its kind—which came to him, sprung from the Waters' insidious depths. 'I don't like this,' he thought, and with that thought, the first seeds of discontent were created. With that thought, he pushed himself upwards, and he pushed himself out, and he succeeded.

"Slowly, infinitesimally slowly, he was able to gather his wings about him and return to the void between the Water and the Nothing. And slowly, while the Winds dried his wings as it hurled him across the existence, he forgot his discomfort and his act against it. And slowly, so slowly, he once more focused on the Winds and the Nothing and the Waters as a being of hope-without-thought and not a being of hope-with-thought as he had been.

"The Winds cast him into the farthest reaches of the ever-expanding Nothing until the Nothing took him in its clutches and held him fast. The wind buffeted and blew, but the Nothing was all-consuming, and it feasted on the lonely angel. It devoured his presence, his attention, his hope. It devoured his body, and his fears, and all those walls so carefully placed around his mind. In its gluttony, the Nothing exposed his mind to thought, and he thought. The angel thought again, and he thought, and he thought, until he realized as something, he was more than nothing and greater than Nothing. In him, he realized he carried the something of himself. Not the something of the Silver City, not the something of his Father, or his siblings, or his home, but the something of himself. He, as something of hope-with-thought, was his own; he cast his own light to cast his own shadows.

"The lonely angel threw his own light, created from freewill, into the Nothing, and the Nothing was repelled into shadow. The angel saw that the shade was good, and so he created more light. He fastened his lights into balls and clusters, and he carried them across the universe. He transformed them into galaxies and constellations, swirls and spirals, and with every one, from the weakest red to the brightest blue, the Nothing was turned into specters of itself. By this method, the lonely angel created duality: without light, there is no shadow, and without shadow, there is Nothing.

"The Winds saw what was happening and they rebelled. They tossed the angel once more into a singularity, but the angel was not afraid; he had stars and planets, and they were his tether. With such thoughts, the angel chained the Winds to the stars and corralled the chaos of his dimensions into spheres and orbs of light scattered about existence.

"With the Winds tamed, the Water fell soothed, but the angel thought to disperse the Water. He thought to bring it to his stars, so that it might mix with the Winds and be tainted by the shadow of Nothing, but his Father called out to him before he could do so. The lonely angel let the Water lie when with his Father came all his siblings.

"The angel was glad to see his family again. His heart rose in joy as they flew between his stars and his shadows unhindered by the Winds and not fearful of the Water. He was happy, but he was not. Thoughts came to his mind, for he had shed the shell of hope-without-thought into the deepest planes of Nothing.

"'If you were with me this entire time,' the angel dared say to Him, 'then why did you not come when I suffered? Why did you not aid me?' And his Father, omnipotent and never challenged, responded in the first anger. When there is light, there is dark, and where there is innocence, there must also be anger; so the angel created.

"And so the lonely angel was cast down from his home into the depths of the netherplanes. He burned as he Fell, igniting as he punched through solar system after solar system, and his flames lit Hell's fires. The angel was afraid, and alone, and in pain, and by his Father's anger he was forced to rule over those whose lands he cratered, never to return to his siblings. He ruled unwillingly, forever longing to touch his creations once more, to reach up towards his lifelines, until the pangs grew too much and, not too long ago, he decided to take a vacation."


	3. Holidays

Holidays (and a first attempt at epistolary)

* * *

Dear Mr. Morningstar,

You are cordially invited to the Decker Holiday Party on December 31st, 2018. The event will begin at 6pm and is expected to run until 2019, with food and drinks provided. Please RSVP at your earliest convenience.

Best Wishes,

Chloe Decker

P.S. Please?

* * *

Dear Lucifer,

I sent you a letter last week, but I don't know if it made it to you. I'm hosting a holiday get-together for the crew and was hoping you would join. It starts at 6pm. Dan, Ella, and Linda are going to be there, and we'd love it if you came, too. I know things have been rocky between us since Pierce, and that's mostly my fault for pushing you away, but I want to fix it.

Merry Christmas,

Chloe

* * *

Dear Lucifer,

Please don't be that hard on yourself. You're not a monster, and you're not evil. I'm not scared of you; I was frightened by what it meant. Everything I didn't believe turned out to be real, and I needed to deal with that.

You don't scare me, Lucifer—you're my partner, and nothing will change that. Please don't beat yourself up. I just needed space to come to terms with everything being real, and I'm sorry that I pushed you away for that. I just needed some time. I've had time, and I've had space, and I want you back in my life.

I know you declined, but reconsider. I want you here.

Please?

Chloe

* * *

Lucifer,

That is something you should have told me sooner, but me being a miracle doesn't mean that your father is manipulating me. I am my own person, and no one is forcing me to do anything. No one is forcing you to do anything either, understand? I have my own emotions, and my own feelings, and they are mine. They are not planted, or fake, or anything like that; yours, too. And also, YOU ARE NOT A MONSTER. I have my choices, and I've made my choice, and I want you here. With me. So it's your choice, now, and maybe I'm selfish because I know what I want and I hope that you choose it.

Come on, Lucifer, and get your head out of your ass,

Chloe

* * *

Lucifer,

Fine. Look, I'm not going to deny that today didn't go great. But we still caught the guy, and we still helped that family, and so maybe I had a little existential crisis again, but I wasn't scared of _you_ , Lucifer. I wasn't scared of you. I'm not scared of you. I'm still trying to come to terms with what your existence means, but to do that, I need you with me. Ask Linda.

Maybe I didn't seem it today, but I was happy to see you. I've missed our banter, and your jokes, and everything we had between us. I know that we cannot return to where we were before, and I don't want to; I want to continue forward. With you. You're my friend, and I _desire_ us back.

I know you're beating yourself up again, so I'll reiterate: you are not a monster. You are a good man who was given a shitty hand. You are not evil. You are my friend, and I don't think that any universal changes can shake my faith in us.

I want to see you at the party next week,

Chloe

P.S. STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP!

* * *

Lucifer,

Come on. Last chance. Take it. Please. Please, please, please. Be there tomorrow. Be there with me, and Trixie, and Maze, and Dan, and Ella, and Linda. Please. You're basically family. 6pm, my place. Please.

I miss you

* * *

Dear Mr. Morningstar,

Thank you for attending the Decker Holiday Party. I was glad to celebrate the coming of the new year with you, and both Trixie and I wish you all the best in 2019.

Best wishes,

Chloe Decker

P.S. Dan has Trixie tomorrow—come over?

P.P.S We're not having sex.

P.P.P.S Bring coffee.


	4. Missing Person

Missing Person

* * *

 _FBI… further notice… with pay… so sorry…_

Chloe heard the words. She understood them. She understood them as well as she knew how she got home. Drove herself. LA traffic, stoplights, 4-ways, home. That was how it always happened. That's how it must have happened. And then she'd gotten herself in bed. Trixie, dinner, bed. It couldn't have happened any other way. And now?

Oh.

She was staring at the ceiling. Because she'd been shot—yes, focus on that. That was why, nothing more, just the shock, just the bruise, better than it could have been. Better than dead, better than riddled by God (she giggled. _God_.) knows how many bullets f—no. Don't go down the rabbit hole. Don't eat the biscuit or drink the tea or challenge the queen. She giggled again. He was a king. Lucifer: the king of—

No.

Ceiling.

Boring. Good. Very good. Practically angelic. He's an angel. With feathers. White, glowing feathers. And third-or-worse degree burns. Because he'd fallen and—the pick up lines. He'd probably smite her if she ever tried one on him. Could he smite? Had he smited? Smote? Smoted? Smoot? Whatever. Down the rabbit hole, Decker. Hole in one. She couldn't see the ceiling anymore. She couldn't see the ceiling because her eyes were closed, that's why. They were on fire. Not his. They were on fire from tears.

Chloe slept.

She dreamed of hellfire eyes and ravaged skin. She dreamed of exposed sinew and white bone, of shiny red muscle and pain, burning, icy pain. She dreamed he called out to her, and she dreamed that she ran away, and she dreamed a nightmare. She dreamed she was falling, white wings immobile behind her, and she dreamed. She dreamed she died, the bullet in her heart, and she dreamed she stabbed Marcus, dagger twisting farther, harder, breaking bones and burying into him. She dreamed she killed Lucifer. When she woke—was she awake? Was she awake for the first time? Shadows on a cave wall. Lucifer was alive, Marcus was dead, and she hadn't run away. She hadn't… but she has. 1:04 AM. Chloe slept.

The shadows on the wall were shadows, and she was drawn past the puppet master's flame, but she refused.

She had not seen anything. There had been nothing there: tricks of the light, tricks of fate, tricks of irony and persistence and cruel fact. There was no puppet master or puppets. There was nothing besides the tangibility of the shadows and the tangibility that she was not at work. She needed to work. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. No higher power, no lower; nothing in between. Just the dinge of crime and fatal trick and the perpetuity of common life.

But there was no work. There was crime, but no job; money, but no purpose. No murders she could track, no murderers to chase, no death to sharpen her mind and lead her focus to water. It was a normal day in common life, but when she picked up her phone to text Lucifer, her fingers froze and her mind drew back and her breathing drew thin and—

She was alone. Lucifer was… Lucifer was a normal club owner, with a normal business, and a normal constitution, and he really must be busy with all that rich club stuff, so she was alone. She was alone without a murder and without a purpose and without a partner. She was alone.

Her thoughts were cacophonous, thunderous roars in empty caverns devoid of life and decoration.

Truths were not truths, but they felt so real, as indescribably real as they were improbable, and those burning eyes and that twisted dagger, and there was Hell and there was Heaven, but there couldn't be—there couldn't be—for if there were, then—

Then nothing. Then there would be nothing. She needed answers. She needed answers, but her hands wouldn't cooperate. Her phone refused to dial him. _Him_. Him, with all his metaphors, and that wasn't what she needed. She couldn't take the regular, she couldn't take the face-value and normal. She couldn't go back to shadows. So she called his brother. She called his brother, but he didn't answer. So she called her roommate, but she didn't answer. And Chloe was alone. She was alone, and no matter how many times she tried Amenadiel or Mazikeen, no matter how many times she texted and called, neither answered. Gone. Gone, just like her life. Just like the shadows.

Chloe did not sleep.

She did not dream that Lucifer was who he said he was. She did not dream that Marcus was dead, or that she was falling, or that she killed her best friend. She did not dream, and she did not suffer, and this was good. She had no work, but she had work: no response in contact spread the course of the day meant incapacitation or missing. It wasn't murder (God, she hoped it wasn't murder) but it was something, and Chloe did not sleep.

Charlotte had been murdered here, and Amenadiel had gone missing. Charlotte had been murdered here by Chloe's almost husband. It wasn't fair. This whole world—it wasn't fair. Chloe had seen it. She'd seen the figures. She'd passed go. And if all that were real, if all of it were actually real and she wasn't absolutely mad, then what was the point? Charlotte had been trying. She'd been trying to be a good person, trying so hard, heart-achingly hard. She'd tried so hard to become anathema to her past, and she'd been killed, and the birds still had the gall the chirp and the leaves the will to rustle. If someone trying could die in an instant, if someone trying didn't have any protection from the figures, then what was—a dead end circle. Chloe was there for Amenadiel. She was there for the questions and the confirmations, not for the circles, but she was alone.

Amenadiel's apartment had an air of abandonment about it Chloe had only ever encountered with murder victims. He was neat, but there were still pans soaking in the sink and books in piles throughout the room. When she dared flip through some of them, they were in languages she had no hope of understanding, and some of the pages felt like dust beneath her fingers. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but immortals never cease. Immortal. Two 'm's. She was rifling through an angel's apartment because said angel wasn't returning her calls, and wasn't it funny how this new universe worked? She was in a whole new world, and there wasn't any way to go back, and how stupid was that? Chloe would give to go back. She'd give her dreams and her desires, just to have this be a long nightmare. So how about it, huh? Bring back on that mortal shield and let the immortals with-two-'m's deal with this, nightmares as payment? The ceiling did not respond, and Chloe's phone did not ring.

Chloe hadn't slept.

She couldn't sleep, not with her eyes burning from exhaustion, not with the darkness of her room, not with the chilling silence in her mind. It was real. That was it. There wasn't any going back. Marcus was dead. Lucifer was Lucifer. Everything she'd only gave passing acknowledgment to so as to satisfy her mother-in-law was real. God. Hell. Heaven. Angels. Lucifer. And she was an ant without any more tears to give. A plaything in the face of creation, Trixie's playdoh. And she was powerless. And everything was real. And everything was… real.

Chloe couldn't remember waking up, just as she couldn't remember getting dressed or driving Trixie to school or Trixie's concern about her. No. Actually, she remembered that. She remembered that, because this had gone on for too long. Trixie had dealt with too much. Inconsequential prisoners humans may be in comparison to everything she'd thought was pleasant and comforting hope, Chloe was sick of this and sick of what it was doing to her and sick of what it was doing to her daughter. She wanted answers and confirmation, and Amenadiel and Maze were both still gone, but she was certain that Lucifer wasn't. She hoped that he wasn't. God, she hoped. But for all her hope, Chloe still couldn't convince her fingers to cooperate with her phone. She still couldn't convince herself to call him, or text him, no matter how close each time she came. And she was sick of this.

She parked out front of Lux with every memory of how she got there and every intent to continue forward. Every action laid out and every desire acted upon. It was evening, and the line was already well formed, but the bouncer let her pass without question. The elevator opened without question. Lucifer's home opened without question.

And there he was. The Devil himself, sitting on his couch which probably had cost more than Chloe's rent, bottle of something not meant to be drunk from the bottle in hand.

Chloe sat next to him. She grabbed his sleeve when he tried to flee, and she pulled him back next to her, and she leant into him. He was warm. He'd always been warm—like a mug of hot chocolate.

"De… tective." He spoke like he was confused and unsure, and Chloe settled into the warmth, pinning him between the arm of the couch and her body. He wasn't a hugger; he held stiff. "I thought—"

"I'm not going to leave you." He was so predictable sometimes.

"But—"

"No." He quieted. This was nice, holding him, staring at his piano. He hadn't relaxed, but this was nice. Better. Getting better. "Charlotte?"

He didn't speak for a moment, and then he tried to escape again, but Chloe held fast. "In Heaven. Amenadiel flew her up." Good. And good. She supposed that was as good a reason as any to not be able to reach Amenadiel; no cell in Heaven.

"Maze?"

"With Linda. We are not on speaking terms."

Chloe nodded, finally realizing how smooth the fabric of his jacket was. "And you?"

"Likely returning to Hell once you've come to your senses."

"I just got my senses back." She removed her head from his sleeve to look at him. Circles beneath his eyes, stubble slightly more than stubble now, lips set into a grim line, but still the softest eyes. No fire at present. "I want you to stay."

"Even through I'm a monster?" A monster, he thought.

"That's the only thing you've said to me that isn't true." She pulled the bottle from his hand and set it on the ground at her feet. "You're not a monster. Not to me. Stay."


End file.
